Harry Potter and the Inverse Déjà Vu
by DHouck
Summary: The trio sends their memories back in time, and experiences everything that happens in the books one second after it happens to them in addition to normal experiences. It may not seem that one second would make much difference, but you'd be surprised. Time Travel, AU, WIP. This is both Time Travel and Memory Loss. I know why this combination rarely works, but I think it does here.


_The day after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries_

Ron and Hermione were in the hospital wing. Madame Pomfrey said they would both make full recoveries, but refused to let anybody visit them yet. She had just stepped outside when Ron said to Hermione, "These aftereffects are strange. I don't remember anything from that brain, but I still... know things I shouldn't. I mean, I know how to make a Time-Turner, and a bunch of other methods of time travel, and how they track down the people who abuse it. But I can't remember how I know it, or any other details of this guy's life."

"I read about those in third year, for obvious reasons, although I don't know anything secret. They prevented Time-Turners from actually changing Time, and they used to send memories back in time to detect changes, making the memories arrive just as they are formed so there's no difference if Time hasn't been altered. They don't do that any more, but I don't know why not or what they actually do—"

"I know, Hermione. I just said that I knew all this. And they don't use memories anymore because they had a nasty incident with the Memory Charm causing a false alarm."

"Sorry," Hermione said, embarrassed. "Anyway, that potion Madame Pomfrey gave you must get rid of the episodic memories but let you keep the semantic and procedural ones."

"Can you speak English? Wait, I actually understand that because the original version of the Detection Ritual sent only the episodic memory, as others can be regenerated. I don't even know the old spell, but I still know about its effects because they still teach that. This is weird!"

* * *

_A tent in a forest, New Year's Eve 1997_

Ron had returned four days ago. Harry was getting increasingly frustrated at his continued troubles with the Blackthorn wand, but at least everybody was behaving normally again.

"_Wingardium Leviosa!_" said Harry to a fallen twig. The twig lifted about a foot before falling back down. "This is useless!", shouted Harry. "There is a difference between this wand and my old one. Olivander said you never got good results with another wizard's wand, and he was right. I wish there was some way we could just go back and not go to Godric's Hollow."

"That's _it_!" exclaimed Hermione. "Ron, you know about Time Magic. Is there some way we can actually change things?"

"Wait, Ron knows what? When did that happen? _How_ did that happen?"

"At the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. The brain that attacked me belonged to an Unspeakable. Madame Pomfrey erased the memories of his life, but I remember how to do things. And I don't think we can actually change time. The Ministry's made more Time-Turners by now, but even if we had one, we wouldn't be able to remove the protections against changing time or even going back more than 6 hours. The only thing that we could possibly do is the Detection Ritual, and that doesn't change Time unless somebody else has already done so."

"That's the one that sends all of somebody's memories back and releases them as they happen?"

"Almost. It sends all of your experiences and thought, both the ones prior to the ritual, and the ones that would happen in the future without changes to Time, to your birth. It uses actual experiences so isn't affected by things like Memory Charms. It then releases these experiences as you age. There is no way to access them earlier."

Hermione thought about that for a second (Harry was still trying to get over the shock that this was even possible and that they were taking his offhand comment seriously) before she said "We can't get them earlier, but could we delay them a bit and make them later?"

"Yes, that may be possible, but why? We'll already know what happened by then."

"But you'd be able to delay things a few seconds, and then you'd be able to know some things ahead of time. If, for example, somebody asked you a question, you could stop for a few seconds and then see how they'd react to your answer before you gave it, which would probably be enough to help. It may even be enough to stop You-Know-Who from rising in our fourth year, if Harry waits before touching the Cup."

By this point, Harry had recovered enough to say "Wait, I wasn't serious. Even if it would stop Vol—You-Know-Who, do we have that right? What would happen to everybody here and now? Wouldn't we just be, in effect, murdering everybody and erasing this time line? Isn't that why the Ministry doesn't want people changing Time?"

Ron said "No, we'd go on living as before. We'd be creating a new timeline, not replacing ours. We'd keep on living and experiencing; how else could those experiences be given to our copies? This wouldn't hurt anybody here. The Ministry doesn't like people meddling with Time frivolously because other methods are dangerous to everybody and usually it's people with bad intentions that even try."

"And what about that?", Hermione asked. "Even though this seems safe enough, they'll still come after us. As you said, they don't like people changing Time."

"I thought they were willing to consider exceptional cases," Harry said. "If we can stop or even delay the Second War, I think it's worth it."

Ron and Hermione agreed, and they started modifying the Detection Ritual to delay the experiences. It took several hours the next day, but they finally saw each other glow slightly as duplicate images seemed to slip away backwards, even though there was no movement. It was done. Eighteen years earlier, they would be hearing strange echos which may prevent a war, but for now, they needed to fight the war they already had.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I am not sure how often I'll be able to update this story, but I will try to keep you informed if I will not work on it for a while or if I will discontinue the story.

This idea has been floating around in my head for a while, but I eventually decided to post it for a contest with several friends (although only one other person entered). The contest ended on the December 31st, 2012, but I still plan to keep updating the story. The contest was for who had the most non-anonymous reviews from people who did not already know of the story. We both got zero, so it was a tie between the two people who actually entered. The other story was Advancement, by Turiski, found at s/8807528/1/Advancement. It's a StarCraft fanfiction, and I found it interesting even though I know approximately nothing about StarCraft.

If you were wondering, yes, the part about Time-Turners only going back 6 hours was from Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (although there it's not Ministry-imposed, but I still expect the protagonist to get around it). That is the best Harry Potter fanfiction I have yet read, no contest, and is better than the original in many ways.

Even though the above contest is over, I would still appreciate reviews, positive or negative.


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